


fear thou not we will have vengeance for it

by Carmarthen



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Aunt-Nephew Relationship, Backstory, Capulets don't have issues they have a subscription, Character Study, Duty, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Revenge, Tybalt is fucked in the head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1713809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tybalt is not very good at mourning his father; Lady Capulet is perhaps too good at mourning her brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fear thou not we will have vengeance for it

**Author's Note:**

> There are some vague hints of quasi-incestuous or at least inappropriate feelings, nothing more than canon provides. It's also vaguely implied that Tybalt's father was Not A Good Person, but again, I think we get that from canon...

The priest drones on, syllables all slurred together so the only words Tybalt can hear are the occasional _Kyrie_ or _requiescat_. He was never a good pupil, and at any rate he does not care about the words of the Mass.

His aunt Capulet clings to his arm, painted fingernails digging into his sleeve, weeping noisily. On her other side his uncle pats her shoulder, ineffectually. There had been no love lost between him and Tybalt’s father.

He tells himself that it is not that he is a bad son, but that he must be strong for his aunt, whose tears bead on her pale lashes and spot the black satin of his doublet. That is why he does not openly mourn the man who was laid in the Capulet vault this morning.

* * *

By evening his aunt is drunk; her breath when she kisses his cheek reeks of wine, and her embrace is too confining. She wears black, as a good sister in mourning would—and she mourns, Tybalt has no doubt of that—but beside it the pale skin of her throat and chest is near-translucent, traced with fluttering blue veins. He tears his gaze from the curves of her breasts to her face, digging his nails into his hands.

"You look so like him," she says, her hands warm and soft, perfumed, alongside his face as she turns him this way and that in the lamplight.

Tybalt has spent many hours before a mirror, considering how he is not like his father at all: at fifteen his limbs are too long, an awkward cranefly sprawl he has yet to grow into, the height from his mother’s father. His father had been a stocky man going to fat in his middle years, florid with drink and dissipation where Tybalt was sallow with illness. Their faces—like, a little, but finer-cut in the son, his hair the black of his mother’s line. And where his father’s mouth had turned up at the corners, his turned down.

"As you say, aunt," he mumbles, trying not to choke on the words.

"So like him," she says again, her eyes glimmering wet. Her hand turns caressing for a moment, and in a befuddled daze he leans towards her, only to be pushed away. "Perhaps not so like him. Oh God, that those coward dogs would creep from their den to cut him down in his prime! Would that I were a man! I would revenge him with my bare hands!"

She paces now, fierce and queerly eldritch in the shadows, her hands crooked into claws silhouetted by the fire.

He knows what she wants of him, but the vow she seeks sticks in his throat. He has never been a good son. He bows his head and says nothing.

* * *

His uncle’s awkward sympathy is harder to bear. Ordinarily he deals with Tybalt even less than with his wife, and mostly to reprimand him for fighting. The hand on his shoulder is a surprise; the words of sympathy an irony that nearly sets Tybalt to incredulous laughter.

"I am sorry for your loss, lad," he says, with the naive magnanimity that led him to trust the Montagues to keep the peace.

Tybalt ducks his head, unsure what to say. In the end, it’s easier to lie. “They will pay for it in blood.”

The disappointment on his uncle’s face long ago lost the capacity to wound him; he has never understood how to please the man and no longer tries.

* * *

Lord Montague dies a week later—choking on a fishbone, the rumor says—but the Lady Capulet is unseasonably cheerful in her mourning weeds. Tybalt thinks of the belladonna on her dressing table, to keep her eyes bright.

Perhaps if he had been more of a man, she would not have had to turn to such a weapon.


End file.
